A generic Bell 206B helicopter, similar to the one that crashed. Bell 206 series helicopters are considered among the safest.

A movie helicopter pilot’s decision to fly at night with a blinding cockpit light that reduced his visibility resulted in his own death and that of two passengers in Acton in 2013, according to a final report from the National Transportation Safety Board.

A contributing factor was a Federal Aviation Administration inspector’s failure to recognize the flight as potentially dangerous during a pre-flight review.

Pilot David Gene Gibbs, 59, of Valencia and passengers Darren Arthur Rydstrom, 46, of Whittier, and Michael William Donatelli, 45, of Pennsylvania were killed when Gibbs’ helicopter went down at the Polsa Rosa Movie Ranch at 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 10. 2013.

Gibbs’ Bell 206B JetRanger helicopter was being used in a reality TV sequence in which an actor was to drop a backpack to the ground while the helicopter hovered. The actor’s face needed to be illuminated while the cameras on the ground filmed him, so a “flexible light pad was cupped to direct the light toward the actor’s face,” according to the NTSB report.

“Before takeoff, the camera operator asked the pilot if they could try to use the light pad, and the pilot responded, ‘we’ll see, it just really (sigh) blinds me,’” the report said.

Doing what he believed was required to “fulfill the production requirements,” Gibbs made the flight anyway, the report said.

He crash-landed about 1 minute after liftoff.

As for the FAA inspection, the NSTB report states: “Before the accident flight, the company submitted, and an FAA inspector subsequently accepted, a proposed Motion Picture Plan of Activities (POA). During his review of the accident flight’s POA, the FAA inspector had an opportunity to examine the proposed flight and location and determine if the proposed flight activities would be safe, but he failed to identify that the flight would be conducted on a moonless night over terrain with limited ground features and lights and to assess whether the equipment that would be used for lighting and filming would enable the pilot to conduct the flight in a safe manner. It is likely that, if the inspector had been fully aware of the conditions of the intended operation, he might have identified that the proposed flight activities were potentially unsafe.”

The final cause determination of the NTSB is as follows:

“The pilot’s decision to conduct a flight in dark night conditions with an illuminated cockpit light that degraded his visibility and his ability to identify and arrest the helicopter’s descent while maneuvering, which resulted in controlled flight into terrain. Contributing to the accident was the Federal Aviation Administration inspector’s failure to identify the video production’s flight as being potentially dangerous during the review of the proposed flight activities.”